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No matter how good the code is, lack of documentation can kill a project through lack of adoption. The Zend Framework is aimed at developers who do not want to have to dig through all the source code to get their job done and so the Zend Framework puts documentation on an equal footing with the code. This means that the core team will not allow new code into the framework unless it has accompanying documentation.
There are two types of documentation supplied with the framework: API and end-user. The API
documentation is created using PHPDocumenter and is automatically generated using special “docblock” comments in the source code. These comments are typically found just above every class, function and member variable declaration. The key advantage of using docblocks is that IDEs such as PHPIDE in Eclipse or Zend’s Studio are able to supply auto-completion tool tips whilst coding and so improve developer productivity. The manual provides details on all components of the framework and shows what functionality is available. Examples are provided to help you get started in using the component in an application. More importantly, in the case of the more complicated components (such as Zend_Controller),the theory of operation is also covered, so that you can understand why the component works the way it does. The documentation provided with the framework does not explain how to fit all the components together to make a complete application. As a result, a number of tutorials have sprung up on the web by community members to help developers get started on the framework. These have been collated on a web page on the framework’s wiki at The tutorials, whilst a useful starting point,do not tend to go depth with each component or show how it works within a non-trivial application, which is why thisbook exists.